The Light Behind Your Eyes
by BeatnikFreak
Summary: What happens right after something terrible is often forgotten. In the wake of Arthur's death, Merlin has to move forward, as does all of Camelot. In creating something to be remembered, they will never forget the Once and Future King.


**Hello everyone. **

**This is my first ever Merlin fic. Sad that it should come now, when I have been in mourning for Arthur and Gwaine for two days. The finale made me into a sobbing mess.**

**The last line of this fic is where it started, midway through a speculative discussion about the future of Camelot. The last line (DON'T PEEK!) is what a tear-stained me thought at about midnight this morning... I thus have Lightning Rapunzel to thank for this, for creating the situation. And then when I listened to the song that gives this story its name, I knew I had to write.**

**It's nearly three am on Boxing Day and I have been listening to The Light Behind Your Eyes by My Chemical Romance and Bloodflood by Alt-J on repeat since the end of the Downton Abbey Christmas special (I'm in pieces. Fuck you, Fellowes.). Basically, this is the culmination of all my horrid sobbing fan-feels for Merlin.**

**I hope you enjoy it (if that's possible). **

***BeatnikFreak***

The Light Behind Your Eyes

This is all wrong.

He shouldn't be here right now. He should be riding back into Camelot behind Arthur to pealing bells and massed cheers. He should be grinning and clapping him on the shoulder as Gwen runs full-tilt at her husband. He should be seeing Gaius nod once with that small smile of his from the side of the Council Chamber, to tell him that he's done it, he's done good.

He definitely should not be sat on the shore of the Lake of Avalon with his dead best friend's head in his lap.

Merlin takes a look out at the still, cloud-reflecting waters that have already taken from him the only woman he ever loved, to whose neither dead, neither living hands is now entrusted the sword that proclaims Arthur's birthright as the greatest King Camelot had ever known.

Proclaimed, he supposes now.

He looks back down at Arthur's still face. He feels the now familiar kick in the chest and feels his face crumple. No, this can't be true. This simply can't be true.

But it is and he now has to live with it like the people of Camelot will have to as well.

His howl echoes across the lake.

Merlin stays like that for a long time, cradling Arthur because he'd asked him to hold him and he can't really break that promise, not now, not after everything they'd been through. He cries unashamedly, rocking his best friend's form as he wishes desperately that it could be different.

He calms down a little after a while, sniffing deeply. Now is not the time for his tears. He has a duty to Arthur to perform now.

He takes a deep breath, sniffing again, then gently lays Arthur on the grass.

There is something he needs to do. For Arthur. For the man he's always served. He won't stop that now.

Merlin never expected things to end like this. Never did he foresee a future which didn't involve Arthur. Never did he even _contemplate _it.

It was a ridiculous idea. Camelot, without Arthur? Guinevere, without Arthur? The knights, without Arthur? _Merlin_, without Arthur? He'd have laughed in the face of anyone who suggested it.

Of course, he's not laughing now. Who can laugh as they pile a boat with funeral rushes for the man they've lived by for nigh on ten years who's lying dead on the shore not ten feet away? Ten feet for ten years, is that how it works? he asks himself maniacally, before rubbing hard at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He needs to stop it or else he'll never be able to do this.

This. What is this?

This is preparing the boat that will take Arthur away from him, away from Camelot, away from everything he knew. This is bending down to Arthur's limp and lifeless body to wash his face and hands with cupped handfuls of lake water, trying not to think about how the warmth is only just leaching from his skin. This is shining up his armour with his neckerchief, buffing it one last time.

This is hoisting Arthur's prone form from the ground, struggling under the dead-weight of his one-time warrior's body.

"You always were a fat sod," he laughs, forgetting for one moment, and then he realises that Arthur's never been so heavy across his shoulders before and suddenly his body feels too slight to bear the burden of the death of the King of Camelot and the death of his friend.

But he has to bear it, has to do this one last duty to Arthur in body and in name, and so he struggles to the boat, remembering every other time that he's lifted and dragged and pulled him out of trouble or into safety or occasionally the reverse and why couldn't it be that he'd managed to get him into safety in time today? Why couldn't things have gone right today?

He goes over it in his mind as he lifts Arthur into the boat, careful not to knock him. He could have done this with magic, but somehow he knows that this is something he has to do himself, with his hands and strength, another thing that he has to bear.

Would Arthur have lived if they had been quicker? If they'd set off earlier? If he hadn't let him rest?

It torments him. It likely will for the rest of his days.

But for now, he has to focus on his duty.

He lies his fallen King in the centre of the boat, taking care to spread his red cloak of Camelot out beneath him as if he were caught in the midst of battle, sprinting with the colours of the realm he so loved fanning out behind him. He straightens his armour, taking the care that he'd learned the hard way. He tucks his hair behind his ear so he stays neat.

The hardest bit is folding Arthur's hands together. To take the strong hand in his without the life and verve and power it had always possessed hurts him more than he could ever have believed. It's a stark reminder that he really is dead.

He knows he has to send the boat off now. He knows it's time. But he can't bear to let him go without saying one last goodbye.

He touches Arthur's hand for the final time.

"Arthur Pendragon. The best king Camelot's ever known. Great warrior, fantastic politician… but we all know that anyway and I don't want you getting any bigger a head than you've already got." He sniffs a laugh. "You were an arrogant idiot when I first met you, but even then I saw the man you would become. I am honoured to have been able to see you grow into that man." He wipes at his eyes furiously. "You were my best friend, Arthur. Even if you weren't, it would have been a privilege to serve you. As it is, it was the greatest thing I have ever done or will ever do for the rest of my days."

He stops. There's nothing more to say, and yet there's so much. But he must say his goodbye now.

He smiles slightly through his tears. "Bye, clotpole."

Merlin waves his hands, summoning the last magic that he'll ever do for Arthur Pendragon, and the boat begins to move.

He chokes back a sob, thinking how Arthur would have called him a great big girl. He almost wants to laugh; but who can laugh as they watch the boat carrying their dead best friend glide inexorably away from them?

He watches until the small boat becomes a pinprick on the horizon, shadowed by the shores of Avalon.

"Farewell, Arthur Pendragon of Camelot, the Once and Future King. You will rise again. I hope to god I'm there to see it."

He turns away, not seeing the flash of gold that paints Arthur's name and title on the side of the boat for all eternity.

Noone's there to greet him when he gets to Camelot. He walks slowly to the Council Chamber.

The piecemeal assembly rises as one when he comes into the room. He knows they're there, but he only sees one person.

"Is he - ?" starts Leon, but Merlin's looking at Gwen as she fixes her eyes desperately on him, a question in their brown depths.

He shakes his head.

There are gasps all around him, but the only thing he sees is Gwen's face as her heart shatters into a million unrecoverable shards.

Gwaine's dead too. He'd searched the room for his incorrigible friend, but the empty seat by Percival had chimed a horrible chord in his mind.

The confirmation had been the giant man in his cut-off sleeves who'd folded into a fraction of his original size, his face telling of utter, destroying grief.

Merlin knows how he feels.

The council closes up quickly. Gwen will succeed Arthur like he'd said. Merlin doesn't feel much any more. He's dead to it all. Dead like all the men who died to end a war whose peace they'd never see.

What did all the crap about destiny mean, then? What did it _mean_?

He walks home with his eyes on the flagstones, pushing the door open with an effort.

Gaius is sat there waiting for him. He takes one look at his charge and stands up.

"I'm so, so sorry, Merlin."

"I didn't manage it. I didn't save him. I failed." The words come out garbled, his voice no longer working. He feels the salt begin to burn in his eyes again, not that it's really left. "I _failed_ him, Gaius. I failed him."

He cries into the man who's been a father to him's shoulder until he can't any more.

Camelot's unscathed. It jars with the utter destruction wrought by the events of the last week. Gwen's crowned with no glory, Leon's voice sticking in his throat as he declares Arthur dead.

Her fingers never leave her husband's royal seal, constantly twisting it between her fingers.

The first months are hard. The knights struggle with the gaping holes in their ranks, the spaces that good men had filled. Gwaine's jokes and drinking and flirting. Arthur's leadership and friendship. Even under Leon – for who else could lead the knights of Camelot in the absence of the King he so revered? – the transition is difficult. They cannot forget who they have lsot.

Gwen struggles, although not in public. She puts off an air of calm and justice that soothes the grieving people – _her_ people, now – who feel the loss of their beloved King so deeply. She handles her duties well… the model of a queen. Even Uther might have admitted it.

Uther wouldn't have agreed with her edict two weeks after Arthur is declared dead. Gwen legalises white magic, whilst black sorcery is still punishable by death. It's easy to justify it when magic is what won the battle of Camlann and brought about the end of Morgana's tyranny.

As such, Merlin finds himself as court sorceror. It's not something that he ever expected to happen, but Gwen whispers in his ear as she places the chain of office around his neck that it's what Arthur would have wanted.

He thinks it's probably true, and so he does his best to settle into a role that he's highly aware should have been serving Arthur until both of them were old and grey. He misses Arthur and Gwaine viscerally. It hurts even when he's not thinking about it.

But he carries on, in the name of those who are fallen.

Gwen seems to be doing well. But she cries every night into her pillow.

Merlin does his best. He tries to comfort her… which is somewhat difficult when he too is in deep mourning of a different kind.

It's as he tries to comfort her one evening that it comes out.

"I want him here, I need him here, I need him here now of all times!" cries Gwen.

"I know, I know," he soothes, before stopping as he processes her words. "Hang on…" He looks at her. She bites her lip, the tear stains on her face not obscuring the truth clearly writ there.

A rush of sadness and sympathy for the woman he considers a sister floods through him. He reaches out to hold her in his arms. "Oh, Gwen."

The baby is born seven months later with the hair and eyes of his father. It seems natural that he would be named Arthur too.

Merlin watches over the small child in an unspoken promise beget the day he was born. Gwen trusts him to the end of the earth and he will do his utmost to serve that trust.

Just like he did with the boy's father.

And so Merlin becomes tutor as well as sorceror, playmate as well as protector. He does not deify Arthur to his son… but he does make sure he knows who his father was. Who his father is. And that he would have been loved like no child was ever loved.

He loves him too. He's the nephew he never had.

'Uncle Merlin', with his magic tricks and wonderful stories and terrible jokes becomes a firm favourite of the young Prince with the golden hair and stormy eyes. And all the while Gwen smiles with the faintest pain in her eyes at the small boy becoming the image of the father who had been the uncle's best friend.

And thus the triumvirate of Camelot is formed.

Gwen the loved, respected, just queen who acts for the people before anything else.

Leon, the capable head of the knights who acts as advisor and friend whenever the need arises.

And Merlin, court sorceror, the skinny boy who possesses more wisdom than anyone ever believed and will do anything for the people he loves.

They survive well, leaning on one another in this new age, pulling Camelot and themselves through. They negotiate with other lands. They eliminate the remnants of any sects who were under Morgana's evil thrall. They bring the kingdom to new heights and strengths as a growing boy dances about their feet, learning the way of his inheritance from three people whose minds never stray far from his father.

Without one another, they would probably have fallen to the unrelenting devastation of grief. But that never has to happen, because they have their rocks on which to lean; so, while the pain never goes away, it's easier to bear when you have two others at your side.

He's becoming more and more like Arthur in behaviour when Gwen marries Leon. It's a marriage of mutual respect and friendship and comfort. Gwen can't bear to rule on her own and Leon has always been there, been her support in the court. He refuses to take the title of King, to his credit.

Merlin knows that Arthur would have approved of Leon taking care of her. He will do, when the time comes for him to rise again.

Merlin's not sure if he will be around to see that day. He knows he's not aging in quite the conventional way, his hair still raven, skin still unlined at the age of thirty-five. Leon jokes often that he looks as though he's not aging at all, but the looks that Gwen gives her adopted brother when her new husband says these things is far from joking.

He would like to be there, he thinks. He misses Arthur. Misses the laughter and the bravery and the simple _sharing_ of it all. It's probably going to be a while, but he'll wait for it. He thinks someone should be there for Arthur, and why not him? He's gone through all sorts for him; what more's a few aeons, he laughs a little to himself.

He'll wait as Leon and Gwen have another child, a sister for Arthur that they call Freya. Merlin appreciates the gesture more than they can know.

He'll wait as they face internal revolt and find peace in a way that the once and future king would have applauded.

He'll wait as Arthur and Freya grow into children, into adolescents, into adults, all the while maturing into people that Arthur would have been proud of, blood and not. People that he would have loved.

They will rule too, in kingdom and in hearts. They will find glory and strife of their own. They will have happiness and sadness and find spouse and family. They will live and love.

And Merlin will be there to advise them, always on the sideline, the boy in the neckerchief, always remembering his fallen friend for whom he gave everything and would do so again in a heartbeat.

**If it were down to me, Arthur would have lived. But we can't all get we want. And thus this is the next best thing.**

**I'm well aware that this may not be canon. I know it doesn't fit with the Morte D'Arthur, or much of the Arthurian mythos (which I'm actually pretty au fait with), and I'm aware some people will hate my version of events. But this is how I see it could be.**

**Please leave a review to tell me how I did. It will be greatly appreciated.**

**And now I ****_really_**** need to go to bed.**

**Thanks for reading.**

**Merry Christmas.**

***peace out***


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